by Prue Batten
And indeed the two animals had pushed noses deep into the meadowsweet hay and betrayed no concern whatever as their owners left with the Marsher.
‘I don’t know how long we’ll be.’ Adelina shook hands with the man who reminded her a little of Buckerfield.
‘If you follow that path’, the Marsher pointed north, ‘that’ll get you to Ferry Crossing in next to no time.’ He looked at the sky that was beginning to darken. ‘And not a moment too soon. Now winter approaches, the nights are drawing in very hasty. Alright then, be off or the bogeys’ll get you in the dark.’ He waved as they moved away. ‘Cheerio.’
Their feet echoed on the hard timber planks of the boardwalk. In single file, passing the occasional journeyman walking in the other direction, they proceeded carefully for there were no protective handrails on either side. I’d not like to travel the walkway in the dark, thought Adelina, despite the lighted lamps placed every few feet. She looked at the dark green depths to either side and fancied she saw the leering faces of fuaths of all kinds, male and female.
‘Well, Threadlady,’ the hob spoke from behind, sensing her unease. ‘You wanted to go to Veniche and you must pass through the Marshes to do it.’ It was his turn to be acerbic. ‘I just can’t see that this little escapade will accomplish anything.’
‘I want to see Lhiannon, hob, to know she is safe. I owe it to her because she tried to keep me safe. Besides she gave me your friendship, I am obliged to her for that if nothing else. And I’ve told you before, I have this feeling that all who know me are...’
‘Fated to die, I know, I know. Sink me woman, it’s ridiculous. And I fail to see how you being near the Gate, which I might add is another problem, is going to help with anything. Adelina, forgive me, but you are mortal and will be more of a hindrance than a help with this quest Lhiannon must carry out. Other business is best left to Others, trust me.’
‘Well pardon me for caring, hob.’ Adelina muttered under her breath. She strode along, bigger steps that caused Gallivant to trot to keep up. ‘And sink me, why is me being near the Gate another problem?’ She mimicked his tone as she posed the question. Behind her she heard a tired sigh and slowed down.
‘It’s not exactly you being near the Gate that’s the problem, Adelina. It’s... oh, it’s that I don’t exactly know where it is in Veniche. No one does except the Faeran. So you see, this whole thing is a bit of a wild goose chase during which you lay yourself open to discovery and, let’s not be coy about this, death because we will never find Lhiannon, I’m sure. If Severine chances upon you, she will snuff out your flame,’ he blew a breath out sharply, ‘just like that.’
He stopped and she halted as well and turned around carefully because she didn’t want to overbalance into the arms of the Nicker. She took a step toward the hob and hugged him. ‘You’re right, I know. But Gallivant, I have been such a victim and I think to myself of all whom I loved and who have displayed such outright courage. I must be brave too. And if I could just know Lhiannon is still alive it would lift my spirits beyond the pervasive grief that I live with. Please try and understand.’ She took his slim hands in her own and squeezed them. ‘Look at it this way if you like. I am a woman and a mortal into the bargain, so nothing much I say is going to make any sense, is it? We are not regarded by Others as the most clear-thinking bunch, are we? But I can tell you this - I am aware there may be danger and if you can bear with me knowing that I might be your poison as much as anyone else’s, then I would rather have none but you by my side and at my back.’ She smiled the golden smile that so charmed Buckerfield and had brought Kholi melting like butter in the sun, to her side.
The lights along the boardwalks lit up Ferry Crossing, little golden will o' the wisps, delicate, pretty and enticing. The lamplighter proceeded through the unusual town calling ‘Light time, night time’ and children circled around him like moths to the flame. Yellow patterns shivered and wavered on the water that meandered through the Marshes. In places undisturbed by the dancing night airs, one could look down and think a depository of topaz or bullion lay below the surface. It could be a trap for the unwary, thought Adelina, designed to draw some negligent, greedy mortal into the waters of the Pealliadh or the Addanc and from there to their deaths. She shivered.
To her left and right, boardwalks led to four square wooden buildings on thick wooden stumps and with skillion rooves and finials which in daylight would have revealed the carved shapes of marshbirds. And by way of an address, that is how one found one’s way in Ferry Crossing - to the House of the Swan, the House of the Egret, the House of the Moorhen and so forth.
Gallivant led the two of them to the Inn of the Thrush, a comfortable hostelry on the seaward side of the town and whose rooms overlooked the broad sweep of the laguna. At night, one could look to the north over those waters and see a hazy aura of light cushioned by the horizon… Veniche, its glow beckoning and enticing.
Chapter Twenty Five
The girl had led Phelim unwittingly through the Marshes towards Ferry Crossing on the edge of the laguna. As he walked through the woods, he thought back to one of Ebba’s acidic comments on the Faeran.
‘To be frank,’ she said as her knotted fingers slipped over Grimalkin’s white fur. ‘I think the Faeran are extremely content at being what they are - self-indulgent, arrogant, utterly oblivious to the damage their games cause. They are never involved in serious business. Life is ever the pursuit of one light moment after another at the expense of anything that lies in their way.’
Then Ebba, what am I doing if not serious business? But he examined the rest of her comment. Never one to be less than courteous, gentle and empathetic, he found Other reputations sticking to his hide like wet clay to a farmer’s boot. Contrary, perturbed at being Other when he wished to be what he had always been, that part of him that had been coaxed and groomed by his mortal stepmother fought to be free of the Faeran slur. The memory of the girl’s expression as she faced him earlier had filled him with distaste and despair. He hadn’t asked to be Faeran and he wondered if the Faeran woman and her bag of souls had never entered his life, whether Ebba would ever have told him the truth. He could hear her loved voice so clearly in his mind and he recalled the only thing she had ever said of Veniche, his destination.
‘Aine Phelim, it’s wet and smells of mould and damp and is like to bring on an ague. Pretty if you like the light on the water and the gracious buildings but I’m for the open spaces of woods, sea and sky, where I watch a linnet fly free and not cooped in a gilded cage. For me, Veniche is just that - a big gilded cage. Mind you, they do make wondrous glass. I always regret never buying a paperweight when I was there. Those little objects look as though the Faeran have scooped up a field of wild flowers and shrunk them to minikin size to place them under glass. I have always been partial.’
But in the Marshes it was far less gilded. People ebbed and flowed around him in rivulets as wide as the walkways. He relished the sights and sounds, the colour, the wide palette of green as the Marshers hurried about their dusk business. He thought it was like looking across a coppice of leaf and bud in springtime.
Except for that flaming autumn shade...
His eyes grasped at the colour, the tint of a new-minted groat, gelt that most rarely see. And thus Marshers turned also and looked curiously at the woman as she pushed against the flow, a thin, odd young fellow guiding her.
Phelim’s eyes rested on the downcast face and as he observed the tawny hair and softly tinted skin, he was struck by a gentle pain under his ribs where the chamois bag rested, warming like a heart that has found true love.
Around him, as the unusual pair approached, the sound of cheer and gossip hummed. The odd mild call echoed but everybody seemed equable and polite so that when a harsh, wild shout split the ambience apart, the woman and her friend were galvanized as if by a bolt of lightning.
‘Bicce! Bicce! I’ll get you!’ At the far end of a walkway, a bald-headed ruffian screamed and the woman’s head flew up,
her companion dragging a dark hood over her hair and then pulling her along until they were level with Phelim.
He stepped aside, the woman’s superb hazel eyes meeting his and he saw how they overflowed with fear and how tears made them sparkle. The fellow pushing her hissed, ‘Come on, Threadlady. Down here, quickly.’ And as he dashed past, the frisson that is Other vibrated between he and Phelim.
The agitated atmosphere sparked as people called and jostled like birds disturbed, the Marshers disliking the aggressive shouts from further along the walkway. But the thug continued to yell, battering his way through the crowd and Phelim watched as the hunted couple dashed down a dark walkway under the shade of large overhanging eaves.
The ruffian had cold grey eyes Phelim observed, with nothing but death and misery in their far reaches and the fellow’s mouth snarled as he shoved aside men, women and children.
The chamois bag become colder during the fracas, chilling until it burned Phelim’s ribs with frostbite, and all that was Faeran in him once again flooded effortlessly to his fingertips and he cast himself invisible, waving a hand at the walkway down which the lady and the hob had disappeared so that it shape-changed into the vertical boards of a blunt-ended building. His leg came out as Luther rushed by and the fellow tripped, crashing to the walkway, his chin striking the ground.
Gallivant glanced back.
That fellow, the one with the frisson, he was Other to be sure. Faeran? He hadn’t got a good look, hustling Adelina as he had been. Now he saw Luther trip and fall over something, his chin crashing heavily into the timber of the walkway. And there was something about the way people walked past their own hiding place as if it didn’t exist, that made him wonder at their good fortune.
‘Gallivant,’ Adelina shivered, her face pale as a shroud, ‘how did he get here? I didn’t think he’d find me so soon. Aine help me.’
‘Hush Lady, hush. We are honestly as safe as if we are on the other side of the world. But we must be careful to cover your hair, it’s like a beacon. Oh, look Adelina, sink me, look at that.’
Luther moaned. People bent to help him stand but he brushed away their concern and holding a linen square to his profusely bleeding chin, he shouted. ‘Where are they, did you see them? The woman with red hair and the man. They went down that way!’ He pointed at the bare wall in front of him. People shook their heads and their mutterings provoked him further. ‘You must have seen them! They were so obvious. Are you wretched idiots blind? So help me.’ He spun around in a vortex of rage.
A brave man, taller and broader than Luther and whiskered with importance, took Luther firmly by the arm. ‘Sir, you have hurt yourself and given your head a resounding wallop. There was no red-haired woman and you see, this building has no entry from this walkway.’ The man bent and sniffed at Luther. ‘I think you perhaps had a little too much wine earlier and perhaps you imagine things. Either way, you must get that chin tended because it is split open like a watermelon. Come now.’ Luther jerked his arm but the man held fast, and turning a last, angry and baffled look at the wall and seeing blood dripping at his feet, he finally allowed himself to be led away.
The House of the Pee-Wit hung over the water, the patron welcoming Phelim pleasantly and giving him a room overlooking the gold-tinged water of the laguna. Much later, bathed and fed and with a promise his clothes would be clean by morning, he took his tired body and his over-filled head to the pillow. Outside he could here the small slap of wavelets against the piers of this town above the water, and in the distance, the sound of frogs and crickets and the odd nightbird. Occasionally there was an unseelie shriek and he would perform the mortal horn sign against malign enchantments and catch himself ruefully.
He drifted in that delicate state between dozing and sleep, content for a few hours to let introspection and examination disappear. Faeran or not, exhaustion claimed him and he surrendered himself quite readily to sleep when it came, glad to forget for a moment of the chameleon changes of his life and the results such changes may incur.
***
As Gallivant was I know not where, in the room I shared with the hob at the House of the Thrush I was making a fulsome discovery. There was a full-length mirror and after a bath, I had stood surveying the body that had been immured in prison for three months, suffering the agonies of grief and depression and all the nausea and loss of appetite and bodily changes that such conditions entail.
One would assume I would be thin and drawn. Except I was not. My thickened waist and heavily veined breasts told me one thing alone. I was with child. I smoothed my hand over the gently swelling belly, stroking the infant of the Raj who lay safe and cocooned in the dark. I guessed I had conceived that fateful morning when Kholi and I had made love quietly and frantically, with Liam drugged and asleep in the pavilion in the throes of his own awful grief.
On that same morning, Kholi Khatoun, the love of my life and father of my child, had then dressed and gone hunting the Fates and Death.
Chapter Twenty Six
Excitement filled Ferry Crossing, as tangible as a breeze across the skin. Today was the day of the Festival of Water Dressing, a symbolic appeasement to the spirits of the water because everyone knew that water was the mainstream of life and fertility. The Festival took place at midday and all the unattached maids of the town were to execute the Dressing at the wharves, appropriately garbed in white gowns embroidered all over with floral patterns.
Drifting along the boardwalks like so many veela, the young, nubile girls carried baskets of botanica of every conceivable sort, and pieces of glittering quartz and river shells - all for the Dressing. Awaiting them was a large square of sand lying on a stretched canvas on which the floral and woodland offerings would be laid to make a picture of colour and texture. The whole would then be lowered onto the waters of the laguna, to float away to the spirits’ homes ensuring a bountiful year to come for all the Marshers.
Phelim walked to the bottom of the stairs in the House of the Pee-Wit, turning as the mistress of the house called out. ‘Master Phelim, you would do well to hasten to the wharves and secure a spot for yourself to watch the festival. It is a charming event and very mystical for us. We need the Others’ beneficence for another good year.’
Phelim thanked her and wondered what she would think if she were aware an Other stood right now in her house. He expected no great joy and substantial hysteria and thus found it politic to move out to the walkways and thread his way with the crowd to the site of the festival.
The waters of the laguna were still and boats sat calmly on the moorings, their reflections a mirror image until mischievous breezes set up ripples. Oystercatchers, plovers, gulls and gannets swirled overhead and behind the seaward hubbub one could hear the ever-present frog chorus from the Marshes. Maids in virginal white passed by with their cornucopia of flowers, seeds and mosses and their families and friends greeted each other and chatted as the wharves settled for the business of the festival. It was almost midday.
People pushed politely in order to get a good position by the rails - amongst them Gallivant and Adelina, her copper hair hidden in a floral headscarf tied Traveller fashion, her burgeoning body clothed in a pair of Raji jodhpurs, knitted tunic and a Marshers’ green coat. The clothes were by her bed when she woke, Gallivant presumably up to more mischief as he strove to care for his charge. He stood by her side watching the crowds, and moved sideways for a tall, striking man to squeeze in and he smiled so Gallivant smiled back, the chance to speak lost in the press of people.
Adelina’s attention was fixed on the interloper. Her heart hammered and she went to speak but a whistle on the water shattered the mellifluous Marsh sounds and all heads turned. A handsome varnished galliot pulled away from one of the wharves.
Oars were seen to rake the water and a chant broke out over the top of what had been gentl wharf noise, the prow of the boat swinging as oars feathered to turn the craft north. Then, with a series of shrill whistles that scarified Adelina’s spine, oars str
uck the water in unison and pulled, propelling Severine and a murderous Luther towards Veniche.
Adelina’s hand had grasped the hob’s sleeve as she recognised the passengers. Her nails dug into the fabric of his coat and had he been able to hear above the whistles and the hum of the crowd, he would have heard her speaking to no one in particular. ‘As Aine is my witness, Severine, I hate you.’ She couldn’t help the sob which racked out as with her other hand she shielded her belly. ‘I hate you and you will pay. Somehow, somehow, you will pay.’
Phelim, standing close, had seen the angst on her face and heard her cursing but before he could speak to her, she and her partner, the skinny hob in the vast riding coat with the capacious pockets, had withdrawn into the milling crowds and Phelim’s attention was drawn to the lower deck of the wharf where a soft lute had begun to play now the galliot had disappeared into the northerly distance.
Adelina hurried against the flowing current of the crowd. She wanted peace and some time to calm herself. The stranger had started it. He had a look of Liam she was sure, only he was a little taller and broader and his hair was darker. She had almost spoken to him, although what she had wanted to say was ridiculous. Are you Liam’s family? Mad! But the whistles had started in the galliot and there had been no chance because then she had seen Severine and Luther and her heart dropped through her boots, the idea that she could forget about revenge disappearing in an instant. All her fears and anxieties had rushed headlong and here she was, tearing backwards and forwards along boardwalks with the hob trying to keep pace and asking what was wrong.
She rounded a corner and could run no further. A square lay in front of her, if one made of water could be called such - a liquid space surrounded on all sides by ranks of tiered seating on walkways and in the middle a floating pontoon anchored at each corner. Above the water a system of high wires and swings were strung and an acrobatic troupe practiced for the evening’s festivities. She sank onto one of the lowest seats. High above her, two performers swung rhythmically back and forth and with a distant ‘hop-la’, one somersaulted into the other’s waiting grip. On the pontoon, troupe members mimed fear and then joy as the manoeuvre was completed without incident.